NZTA freight portfolio director Harry Wilson explains the agency’s strategy to move freight more efficiently.
Like your business, much of NZTA’s work is focused on road transport and fair enough; over two-thirds of New Zealand’s freight is carried by road, making road transport vital to our economy and our way of life.
But we also have a substantial and significant rail network in New Zealand. Rail plays a crucial role in the movement of freight, particularly with its ability to connect freight in areas where the roads are becoming increasingly congested, such as to and from our largest ports.
This role is set to become more important, with New Zealand’s freight volumes forecast to grow by around 50% over the next 30 years.
This forecast expansion is why we made it a strategic priority to move more freight on fewer trucks, making it easier for the road transport industry to use high-productivity motor vehicles (HPMVs) including 50MAX.
While there are always improvements that can be made, we’re confident in saying our More Freight on Fewer Trucks priority has been a success. We hit our key ‘H-Miles’ target for the June 2015 year of 25% of all heavy vehicle travel being undertaken by HPMVs including 50MAX. This figure increased to 29% by the end of 2015, just shy of our June 2016 goal of 30%.
I’m confident that what we have seen over the past few quarters is a structural shift in the transport of heavy road freight away from standard heavy trucks towards HPMV including 50MAX.
With this in mind, our attention at the Transport Agency in the freight space is turning to a new priority: how we can achieve greater integration between road and rail to shift freight more efficiently.
This strategic work is part of the government’s direction to the Transport Agency to make the land transport system more efficient in order to set the platform for economic growth.
Generally speaking the view up until now has been that we have a road network and a rail network, either of which can be used to shift freight.
Our goal at the Transport Agency is to start planning and thinking about an integrated land transport system for freight where the question is not ‘road or rail?’, rather ‘how do get my goods from A to B in the most efficient manner?’
We want to see rail network brought fully into a land transport planning and investment process that optimises the movement of freight throughout the supply chain while providing the best outcome for the land transport system as a whole.
To achieve this we will work closely with KiwiRail and our partners throughout the transport and logistics industry. How we can optimise our national transport infrastructure is something that we all have a stake in.
Freight efficiency is both a major challenge and major opportunity for the whole of New Zealand.
The pressure that the dairy sector is under at the moment illustrates that any way we can lower the cost of transporting goods is vital for us to maintain our international competitiveness.
This priority is about making best use of the infrastructure we have to meet the demands of a growing freight task and keep New Zealand moving.
